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Friday, January 07, 2011

Barney Frank: 'I’m Tired, and I Think . . . It’d Be Nice to Have Free Time, Not Have to Read a Lot of Stuff I Don’t Care About'

Well, Bawney, I have the cure for you. How about retiring? Then you'd have plenty of time to hang out on Fire Island and blow doobies with your boyfriend.

He’s old, he’s tired and thinks it would be nice to have some free time and not have to read a lot of very boring and very complicated stuff that he doesn’t care about.

That’s what U.S. Rep. Barney Frank told three college-age “Roadtrip Nation” interviewers during a July 2009 sit-down in his Washington, D.C., office for the public television program that aired Wednesday on ’GBH Kids.

“I’m tired, and I think . . . it’d be nice to have some free time, not have to read a lot of stuff I don’t care about,” Frank said. “But I have this chairmanship. It’s an important time for the country.”

Sean Bielat - Frank’s Republican challenger last November - said he wished he’d seen the Frank interview during the campaign.

“This was part of the case that I was trying to make - that it’s kind of rote for him at this point, that he’s kind of going through the motions, but he feels like he’s so important that he can’t not be there,” said Bielat, who’s undecided about his own future political plans.

As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank spearheaded the financial reform law enacted in July. The Roadtrippers’ 2009 interview with him came on the day of a key House vote on the sweeping health-care reform legislation.

“I’m in the middle of stuff, and I just . . . can’t walk away from it,” Frank told the youths. “I’m getting old and tired, and I’m working too hard, and this would have been a great job 20 years ago when I was 50 years old. It’s a lot of work now.”

“In one of our debates at WBUR, at the end, he made some sort of wistful comment about writing books,” Bielat said. “I think he’s been thinking this way for a while, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him wrapping up his career here shortly.”

Hopefully he can take a couple of hundred Congressional and Senate Democrats with him into retirement. Then we can begin undoing the damage he's caused.